Dear Tom:

A story made the rounds several years ago about one of my favorite tankers, Charlie Vesper. Knowing Charlie, I do not doubt the truth of it.

In Korea when things bogged down to trench warfare, Charlie had a tank up on the line in a defilade position in support of the Grunts on the MLR. It was static warfare. Occasionally the slope-heads would probe our lines with a patrol; occasionally, we'd probe theirs. During even slacker periods, both sides would snipe at each other with rifle fire. There wasn't much in the line of targets for a tank. Yet, they had an overabundance of armor-piercing ammunition for the ninty millimeter cannon and nothing - no armor - to shoot it at. Your being a former supply type, surely you remember the 90mm armor-piercing round. It was merely a chunk of metal which did not explode on impact, but merely punched a neat 90mm hole in whatever it hit - and it hit hard!

There was a Chinese sniper who came to work every morning. He could be seen loping to his position on the hillside opposite the Marines' position. He would take several minutes to get himself situated - put his lunch in a shady spot, lay out his ammo, check his rifle over thoroughly, and eventually begin his day's business of sniping at the Marines. He was a lousy shot, so the Marines didn't seriously bother to dispose of him. I guess he was a source of amusement, or maybe the Grunts were afraid he'd be replaced with a better marksman if they blew him away.

One afternoon, late, he fired a round which struck the top of the turret of Charlie's tank. Charlie didn't like that. He decided to get rid of at least one round of his otherwise useless armor-piercing ammunition. He had the loader chamber one of those sleek, black, pointed-nose rounds. Charlie computed the range to be about 1100 yards. He got into the gunner's seat and laid the cross-hairs right on the sniper's chest. Suddenly, the sniper was through for the day. He got up, picked up his rice bag and left.

That was okay with Charlie. He was in no hurry. He gave his crew instructions not to touch the fire control system of the tank without his expressed permission.

The next morning, Charlie was waiting. The zipperhead came loping back to his place of employment, went through his usual ritual of spreading out his rounds, and generally getting ready to do his duty for Mao. Charlie looked through the 8-power gunner's scope, and was pleased to see the cross-hairs dead center on the sniper's chest. Very slowly and deliberately Charlie used the manual trigger to his cannon as if he was squeezing off a round at the rifle range.

A tremendous blast announced the birth of that black projectile at better than Mach III.

The Chinese never replaced that sniper - at least in that particular position on the hillside. And Charlie can probably claim to be one of the extremely few people who ever snipped with a 90mm armor-piercing round successfully, that is.